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Tag Archives: fairy tales

You really can’t dance in glass slippers

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Ice Scream Mama

I can’t think.

My oldest, middle and youngest sons all have friends over. They are downstairs playing basketball. Boom boom boom. They are up in the living room playing SmashBrother on the WiiU while rummaging through leftover Valentine’s chocolates. Munch munch munch. They are up and down the stairs playing hide and seek. Stomp stomp stomp.

I go around picking up empty crushed water bottles and discarded heart boxes and am happy to find a few chocolates half hidden under the crinkly brown paper shells. On closer inspection, I notice they all have little finger indentures revealing brightly colored cream inside. Orange. Ugh.

The boys are loud, squealing with delight as they find each other hidden behind furniture and under tables, and they are loud, yelling with outrage over a missed turn on the X Box or a controversial point.

But they aren’t the reason for my poor cognitive functions.

I have a headache.

I don’t have a headache.

I have stress.

Jeez, I’m so dramatic. I don’t have so much stress. I live a cushy life, baking brownies for my kids, volunteering at the schools, watching their sport games and writing in between.  Occasionally I meet a friend for sushi lunch and indulge in a massage. I am like a princess. Cinderella? I do have an awful lot of laundry. Snow White? There are all those little people I cater to. Fiona? Well, I’ll just leave that one to your imagination.

No. I am princess Ice Scream Mama and my life is a fairy tale in so many ways but alas every fairy tale must have its wolf.

His name is dad.

More fiery than a dragon. More insecure than an evil queen. More suffering than any beast. He is dangerous and inconsistent. He is desperate for sorcerer’s magic potion or the kiss of true love. Who could blame him? They have the power to heal even the most wounded souls.  If you just click your heels and believe…

I wish I could but I lost my ruby red slippers trying to climb out of the tower I’ve been imprisoned for decades. If only I could let down my hair and just let it go, but this beanstalk isn’t going to climb itself. The sky is falling, the woods grow dark and it’s a long way up to a giant problem and believe me there are no golden harps to steal. Not that I would. Jack is a thieving, greedy pig.

Once upon a time I believed in magic, but now know that happily ever after is about acceptance and compromise, finding the good in the bad, not running away from either the old man and the old woman who want to save you, or the farmers, the bear and the fox who want to eat you. It’s about facing the truths in life and appreciating the reality, not the fantasy, but still leaving room to dream.

But what am I saying?

It’s all the noise.

I make no sense.

I think.

Dang! This thing doesn't work!

Dang! I need a new wand!

*Hey all, give a click here and check out my original essay up on Mamalode, A Mother of Mama’s Boys Grows Up. 🙂

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There Are No Fairy Tales

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Ice Scream Mama

It is night and I am sitting on the edge of my child’s bed, exactly where he insists I sit, in between the old cat laying by his feet and the team of stuffed animals encasing his body like a frame. I am about to read him The Three Little Pigs, one of his favorite books, and even though we have gone past bedtime into my time, he still insists and I comply because I am worn down and feeling both melancholy and appreciative of my gifts, which of course, he is one.

We have at least five different versions of the book. In some, the wolf gets eaten, in others he is merely boiled, and the kind gentler versions spare his life and allow him to run away with only a bit of singed fur. But in all, the message is clear, at least to me, life ain’t no fairy tale. In fact, I’m not sure fairy tales are fairy tales. Even the ones where the princess gets her man, there’s an awful lot of suffering involved.

It’s been a tough week in Suburbia. Not the usual ‘can’t get to my gym class’, ‘I stained my favorite shirt’ or ‘I need to make 50 cupcakes by morning’ tough. Real life tough; the kind that breaks down barriers and breaks your balls, that doesn’t care if your lawn is manicured or your nails, who you are or where you come from. The kind where children suffer and their parents suffer, where people die expectantly and unexpectedly and both are horribly shocking. Marlboro man tough, human tough.

It’s those times that make you wonder about life; want to rage and cry at the sky above, like it holds any power and say, ‘You suck! What is this? This is not okay!’ But the sky doesn’t care. And life doesn’t care. It just keeps on going and going like the wheels on the bus, showing off with its casual beauty thrown haphazardly about. Look at that snowcapped mountain in the sunset. Look at that wild haired child who can’t stop giggling long enough to blow his bubbles. Look at those skyscrapers soaring into the horizon, and the perfection of a rainbow.

So much magnificence, to say yes, there is suffering but there is also splendor to distract you; to mock the heart ache, but also to ease it a bit as well.

Life is beautiful, even though it is pain and death, and no one – not Hansel or Gretel, Snow White or the doomed gingerbread man – can escape unscathed.

No one.

We are all in this together till death do us part. We cannot out outrun life, even when the sky is falling, or a wolf is banging down our door.

Life is tough, meaning rough, dangerous and difficult, but we are also tough, meaning strong, sturdy and resilient.

We have to be.

Because there isn’t always a happy ending, sometimes there’s just the end.

 

 

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